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The legislation, among other features, would allow the FHA to insure up to $300 billion in new financing to help homeowners with toxic loans who face foreclosure.

However, the bill is not a give-away — borrowers would face stiff fees to enter the program and would lose a share of any profits when the property is sold. Lenders would lose on every refinanced loan.

The “Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008″ was strongly supported by both Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), respectively the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Passage with strong bipartisan support has been predicted here for several obvious reasons:

First, the foreclosure crisis is getting worse not better.

Second, Republican senators up for re-election did not want to be seen as opposing help for those facing foreclosure.

Third, Mr. Bush is a lame-duck president who has achieved Nixon-like levels of public dislike.

The Senate and House measures, which differ, must now be unified into a single bill by a conference committee. On Capitol Hill the idea is to see if this can be done before the July 4th recess, a tight schedule.

With regard to the presidential campaign, neither Sen. McCain nor Sen. Obama were present for the vote.

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